Microsoft’s Born to Learn Blog reports a new item typed, called “extended matching”, will soon appear on Microsoft’s certification exams. While still in the process of phasing in this new question type, exactly which Microsoft exams will use extended matching is yet to be determined. And although extended matching is new to Microsoft, it is frequently seen on medical licensure exams. Here’s how extended matching item types work, as explained in the Born to Learn Blog:
Several questions are written using the same set of answer choices, but the list of answer choices is “extended” to include more options than you would see for a typical multiple choice question. In other words, more than four answer choices are presented for each question. The most important piece of information that you need to know about these items is that the same answer choice could be correct for more than one question in the set, and some answer choices may not be the correct answer for any of the questions.
These items appear together on certification exams. They are preceded by a brief introduction and instructions reminding you that an answer might be correct for more than one question or not correct for any. In some ways, this experience is similar to the experience you have when answering case study items–extended matching items with the same set of answer choices appear together on the exam because they are related to each other (i.e., they have the same set of answer choices); however, unlike case study items, these items are not timed separately, and you can return to these items at any point until you submit the exam for scoring.
Microsoft is adding the extended matching item type in order to better assess a candidate’s skills and abilities. Extended matching requires candidates to understand under what conditions certain actions are correct and when they are not (similar to how a person’s skill would be tested in the real-world). Opposed to traditional multiple choice questions that do not test a candidate’s skill in such a rigorous or practical manner.
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